onely death of the hero makes an effective close to the moral
tumult of the preceding scenes. But the reflections, often striking, are
seldom absolutely fresh: that beginning,

The mind, which is immortal, makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts,
Is its own origin of ill and end,
And its own place and time,

is transplanted from Milton with as little change as Milton made in
transplanting it from Marlowe. The author's own favourite passage, the
invocation to the sun (act iii., sc. 2), has some sublimity, marred by
lapses. The lyrics scattered through the poem sometimes open well,
e.g.,--

Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;
They crowned him long ago,
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a null of snow;

but they cannot sustain themselves like true song-birds, and fall to the
ground like spent rockets. This applies to Byron's lyrics generally; turn
to the incantation in the _Deformed Transformed_: the first line and a
half are in tune,--

Beautiful shadow of Thetis's boy,
Who sleeps in the meadow whose grass grows o'er Troy.

Nor Sternhold nor Hopkins has more ruthlessly outraged our ears than the
next two--

From the red earth, like Adam, thy likeness I shape,
As the Being who made him, whose actions I ape(!)

Of his songs: "There be none of Beauty's daughters," "She walks in
beauty," "Maid of Athens," "I enter thy garden of roses," the translation
"Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is
pedantry to ignore; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy
to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but
their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love of the world.

The summer and early months of the autumn of 1817 were spent at La Mira,
and much of the poet's time was occupied in riding along the banks of the
Brenta, often in the company of the few congenial Englishmen who came in
his way; others, whom he avoided, avenged themselves by retailing stories,
none of which wore "too improbable for the craving appetites of their
slander-loving countrymen." In August he received a visit from Mr.
Hobhouse, and on this occasion drew up the remarkable document afterwards
given to Mr. M. G. Lewis for circulation in England, which appeared in the
_Academy_ of October 9th, 1869. In this document he says, "It has been
intimated to me that the persons understood to be the legal advisers of
Lady Byron have d